18G NOTES ON 1'ISH AND FISHING. 



water should have eyes in their bellies. The gudgeon, 

 however, should not complain, for as they seldom quit the 

 very bottom of a stream, they must generally escape the 

 raids of the jack, unless these astute fish, when inclined for a 

 very toothsome morsel, sometimes swim on their backs, and 

 thus are enabled to pick up the gudgeon from the lowest 

 depths. I call them " astute " fish because Mr. Grantley 

 Berkeley, an ardent observer of nature, insists on showing 

 us that jack have " reason " as well as instinct — a view- 

 he illustrates in his recent work, Fact against Fiction, by 

 the account of a jack] which had fed pretty freely on young 

 ducklings, and when at last the remnant were wired off 

 from the pond, persistently watched the coop and 

 enclosure, his " reason " telling him that he might expect 

 a wanderer from the fold to make its way into his domain. 

 However, he did not " reason " about the wire, it strikes 

 me. 



Our Esox lucius has no great antiquity to boast of, as 

 far as books and written documents inform us. I will not 

 discuss with Messrs. Darwin, Huxley, and Co., whether he 

 swam in the rivers of Paradise or in streams which 

 existed a trifling number of millions of centuries before 

 Adam gave names to all fish, flesh, and fowl, or whether 

 he came into being through a " fortuitous concourse of 

 atoms," or by a process of " natural selection," or by the 

 law of " the survival of the fittest ; " nor with the up- 

 holders of " Spontaneous Generation," whether pike were 

 originally developed from " pickerel-weed," as eels are 

 said to be evolved from stray pieces of horsehair which find 

 their way into the water. Certain it is that the ancient 

 Greeks, the observant and all-knowing Aristotle included, 

 were not acquainted with Esox lucius such as we know 



